R5 Impressions

The whole deck system is a really cool idea, like, you know if you're going to a certain area you'll need a certain deck, etc.

I would like the cards themselves in the hotbar to have a little bit more refined design than the current garish way they look.

While it's easy to see what's what from the colors and icons, I think it would be neat if they looked liked actual cards, with cool art on them.

I do like the combat/magic sigils stuff that shows up when you use an ability tho

 

I'm icon challenged. I have a hard time remembering which icon means which thing. I can get there with a fixed bar, but I doubt I'll ever be able handle randomly changing icons. By the time I figured out which one I was looking at, it would be too late for me.

I think I'll be locking lots of skills.

 

I bet Stephen could do some killer concept art for the cards. Since they are going for 'decks', it would indeed be neat to really expand on that idea and make them, as ye say, look like actual 'cards', complete with full art, etc. It would really add a nice element to the whole system, methinks.

 

They could also have a contest for art for the cards...

 

I also think the cards themselves could be "found" in the game world. Like rare cards that give you special abilities.

if card collecting and trading, with some kind of limit, happens in game, that might be a fun mini game aspect.

Think of it as players teaching each other skills they know, or finding some new ability in a deep dungeon through magic.

There's going to be a need with the limitations of this hex system to "explore" for quite a few players, and exploring "empty" hexes to find hidden rumored power cards could work well as a motivator.

 

I really am not a fan of the hotkey/hotbar skills. I stopped playing MMOs years ago because of the spamming nature of using them.

Second thing that turns me off from MMOs are the endless fields of the npcs mobs shuffling a few feet back and forth... Valleys full of bears and spiders. Ok... When I think back to Ultima Online, I really loved the ecology and habitat system with wandering monsters. Made "Hunting" in the woods and tracking a great pastime.

I understand this is alpha but I would encourage the game to be different from the MMOs currently on the market and not try to emulate them in any form.

 

Well, with the card system you will not do that.

I also liked the UO system and world, but was not that much different. Caves full of drakes and some dragons, some few mosnters in the forest (and you know where more or less the ettin or the orc spawned), cemeteries with skeletons... And after valleys full of bears.

 

You didn't read the release notes....the combat system that is in place for skills is just a place holder since they haven't got the deck system quite ready yet.

 

didnt get far at all ( wasd controls just not for me) but i was actually fairly surprised of the stability and gfx ( even on my low end macbook) all in all quite impressed with the current state

 

R5 seems to be a lot more stable due to changes in the gfx rendering, it still crashes occassionally when changing maps but almost never during normal gameplay.

 

My main computer still crashes hardly.

 

I did read them but sometimes these sort of "temporary features" have a way of sticking through an Alpha.

 

Everyone should be more helpful than critical to Say things are clunky is accurate but they are also seeing how much they need to optimize the servers for load and what not. If your reading a book you dont need to read by a 400 watt bulb they are testing more than we are . we are just giving them stress to measure what they need to tweek... If this was open Beta a month before release then I would agree with most everything said but its not lets not forget that

 

Tab key, to target next closest enemy for combat please

 

Agreed. I have asked numerous times for the ability to assign controls properly to the mouse etc as in Skyrim, so far it has not happened. Hopefully they will add more control customization soon.

Yep, please at tab to next target as Sir Stile Teckel suggested.

 

My impression of R5

The switch from gamma lighting to linear lighting was a definite improvement. The sunrise was beautiful to watch.
So far, I like the combat system, even though it is still incomplete.
The addition of several villages for player housing was an excellent move.
The release seems more stable than R4.
I really liked the layout of the Kingsport sewers. Beautiful lighting and shadow effects. Nicely done.
Mimic. It was nice to see an old school Ultima monster resurrected in this game. I remember them from the early ultima games.

 

Bring back Green Slimes that multiply on a hit those were the worst

 

Thanks for the post, I completely agree, I feel that the button smashing is a deterrent to this product. Its got a WOW feel and I was really hoping that they would follow Suit of UO where you can lay out your spells on the screen by dragging them out of the spell book or something to that effect. The whole your only limited to say 10 spells at a time seems like the whole game is designed for care bares who dont know what the variety of available of spells at their disposal is. I remember in UO when you used to use a spell for every situation, now there are no situations where you can use them, a real shame. Monsters in SOTA so far are fairly basic to be honest and the one thing I loved about UO was that you could take on hordes of numbers at the same time and walk away. There doesn't appear to be anything like that in this game, it seems more for decorative purposes with your house rather than going out and seeing what kind of storm you can rip up. I know that the current developers of UO are remaking it to an open world system, following the same idea of the original and expanding on that for player made servers where you can travel between each one. So it will be interesting if they keep their original ideas but introduce the new ones.

 

From what I have seen the typical MMO set up was just something thrown in there as temporary ease of use thing for the spells and combat, and is not the system they want to go with for the finished product.